Membership Rewards 40% Transfer Bonus to Avios
American Express Membership Rewards is a flexible points based currency. In addition to allowing you to redeem your points for merchandise and cash back at around 1%, they allow you to transfer them to a number of partners including: Delta, Singapore Airlines and British Airways.
The Membership Rewards British Airways Bonus
While this doesn’t happen often, American Express is now offering a 40% bonus on the transfer of Membership Rewards to British Airways Avios through 1/31/2015. Normally the points transfer at a 1:1 ratio, however during this promotion 1,000 Membership Rewards points will become 1,400 Avios.
The last similar bonus on Avios was last December, although it only gave a 20% bonus. While they did run a 50% transfer bonus in 2012, I wouldn’t expect that to come back any time soon.
Best Uses
Since British Airways has fuel surcharges on most awards, the best uses of Avios are for short to mid haul flights with partner carriers who don’t charge fuel surcharges. In the United States, their partners are Alaska Airlines, U.S. Airways and American Airlines.
The best uses of Avios are for shorter flights. Flights from 0-649 miles only cost 4,500 Avios while flights from 650-1149 miles only require 7,500 Avios. With the bonus, flights 0-649 miles now cost about 3,200 Membership Rewards points while flights from 650-1149 miles cost about 5,400. What a great deal!
How To Get The Bonus
To get the bonus, simply login to your Membership Rewards account, click “Travel” and then “Get Started” under the Transfer Points section. Once inside select British Airways under the airlines section and you will see the transfer box.
You don’t have to do anything special and the 40% bonus is hard wired into the transfer process.
Conclusion
If you don’t have Membership Rewards points, the 75k Business Rewards Gold offer can still be had with enough patience. Head to my original post for instructions on how to get the offer to show.
Since I often use British Airways Avios, I always try to transfer over some Membership Rewards points during these bonus periods. Thankfully we have until January 31, 2015 so there is no rush at this point!
HT: The Deal Mommy
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[…] is that it takes the guesswork out of transferring Membership Rewards points over to Avios for the 40% bonus. I now know what the program will look like for the next couple of years and can better gauge how […]
how often does amex/BA run this type of promotion? i’m thinking about converting to take advantage of the 40%, but don’t plan to use the points anytime soon (i live in SFO and want to use them for a business class seat to MLE).
Once or twice a year, however the 40% bonus hasn’t been around in a couple of years. The past couple of times it has been less.
[…] as quickly as possible in order to make sure the points posted in time to take advantage of the British Airways transfer bonus. With the points in pending status, he was seemingly going to miss […]
[…] much prefer to use Avios to fly on Alaska rather than cold hard cash, but this is a great deal for Alaska flyers since it is […]